The Boreal Owl Murder

by Jan Dunlap

  “It was Dr. Phil,” Luce said.

  Of course. At the MOU meeting, I’d even commented on his early return, and what had he replied? That he had business to attend to. And that would also explain how my mysterious threat-maker tracked me down so fast: Montgomery must have heard about the discovery of Rahr’s body on the radio and called Dr. Phil, who only had to check the MOU email to confirm that I was the birder who was planning to hunt Boreals that weekend. “He was the investor that Montgomery mentioned,” I said now. “She said they were doing some business together.”

  “Did he know it was poaching?” Luce asked Knott. “I can’t believe he’d get involved in something like that. He had plenty of money.”

  “Had, Luce. According to Montgomery, Dr. Hovde lost a bundle last summer on the stock market, so when she offered him the big returns of VNT, he didn’t quibble over details.” He took another sip from the cup in his hand. “When I explained to Montgomery that it might be a good idea to cooperate—maybe reduce prison time, for instance—she had all kinds of information for us. Including the fact that Hovde had stopped in to talk with Rahr last Thursday afternoon at the university, in hopes of getting him to suspend the study this season. The good doctor was angling for time to get the picker out of there.”

  Which was why Rahr was so defensive on the phone with me later that evening. It hadn’t just been Alice’s disclosing site locations to Stan that had alarmed Rahr; it had been Hovde’s pressuring him to drop the research.

  “When Montgomery couldn’t get Thompson to retrieve the picker,” Knott continued, “she panicked and called Hovde in Florida, because she knew Rahr would find it, and she didn’t have anyone else she could turn to. Hovde hightailed it up here, tried to reason with Rahr, and when that failed, drove up to the forest with Montgomery to try to get the picker out of there.”

  At which point, things really deteriorated: Montgomery heard the hammering, went crazy and attacked Rahr.

  “It was Hovde’s idea to remove Rahr’s outer clothing, Bob. When he saw what Montgomery had done, he had to make a choice: try to save Rahr’s life or try to salvage his cash cow. He was a doctor; he knew the freezing temperatures could finish the job on Rahr and no one would have to know about the poaching. He tossed the clothes in the picker since they were wet with snow and told Margaret to pick them up later.” Knott stood up to leave. “Hovde didn’t want to risk even a DNA trace of Rahr to show up in his car trunk.”

  “But Eddie had tape of Thompson—” I started to say, then remembered again that the tape could only attest to which drivers passed by the gate, not their destinations.

  “Montgomery said he was checking on ladyslippers on the other side of Eddie’s property,” Knott explained. “And that he almost got caught in a shouting match between Ellis and Alice.”

  In all the excitement, I’d forgotten about Ms. Multiple and our newly-appointed Boreal researcher. But Knott had the scoop, thanks to a very late night conversation with Alice and Ellis a few hours earlier at the station. Determined to make peace with his former mentor before he left town to visit his ailing father, Ellis had learned from the department office on late Thursday that Rahr was heading out for the Boreal sites on Friday morning. Eavesdropping as usual on the office line, Alice decided to tail Ellis up to the sites to try to make her own reconciliation with the younger professor, who’d repeatedly rebuffed her attentions. As it turned out, Ellis missed Rahr, but ran into Alice instead. Steamed by both her eavesdropping and persistent pursuit of his affections, Ellis gave up on trying to track down Rahr and took the long way back home, as did Alice.

  “You know, Bob, if you hadn’t found Rahr’s body when you did, it’s possible no one would ever have known what really happened,” Knott said. “I think you must have beaten that bear to Rahr by only a matter of minutes. If you hadn’t, there might not even have been a corpse left to stumble over. Without the body, we would have had just another missing person case, not a murder.”

  And I wouldn’t have gone home to find a threatening note on my bird feeder, a dead owl on my deck and the definite possibility of my career going down the drain. Not to mention the chance to get shot in the forest or trailed by a former CIA agent. Gee, all that in exchange for chasing a little Boreal Owl.

  Who says birding is boring?

  Another detective leaned into the doorway and handed Knott a clear plastic bag with something in it. Knott thanked him and turned back to me, smiling.

  “Remember when I asked you if you knew if Rahr wore reading glasses?”

  I remembered.

  “These are the ones we found under his body,” he said, holding up the plastic bag for Luce and me to see its contents.

  I looked at the item for only a second or two before I recognized what it was.

  “Those are my mom’s reading glasses,” I said.

  “They’re Montgomery’s reading glasses,” Knott corrected me. “We found them beneath Rahr’s body when we cleared the scene last Sunday morning. My guess is that they slipped out of Montgomery’s pocket while she and Hovde were removing Rahr’s outerwear.”

  Looking at the glasses, I remembered seeing an identical pair in Ellis’s hands as he returned them to Alice. I glanced up at Knott.

  “Yes, I know,” he said, reading my mind. “Alice had the same kind. When I saw her using them when I went back to talk with Ellis after our lunch, I thought I had an inside track for finding Rahr’s killer. Then, when you got shot, I was convinced that Ellis and she were working together, since he’d left our meeting early and had ample time to track us up there. I was in the middle of grilling them both when our local publicity hound turned himself in, but until you gave me the tape, I didn’t have a shred of evidence to connect them to last Friday when Rahr was killed.”

  “But then you thought your suspicions were confirmed?” Luce asked.

  “That’s right. I knew Ellis had been nervous every time I talked to him, and the tape proved to me he wasn’t telling me everything. So when I pulled him in again last evening after I saw Eddie’s tape in your hotel room, I let him have it. I showed him the tape. I told him about someone shooting at you, Bob, and how we knew that he was a crack shot. I asked him if he wanted to tell me anything before I arrested him for Rahr’s murder.”

  “A little hardball,” I commented.

  “That’s right,” Knott agreed. “And it worked. He couldn’t wait to give me a play-by-play of his drive up to the site last Friday morning, including his confrontation with Alice. Then I got the full story of his less-than-happy history with Rahr and their differences of opinion when it came to research protocol. He also told me he’d been devastated to think that he’d been the last person to see Rahr before he was murdered, but he was terrified to tell us about it, because he figured he would be nominating himself as the killer. He even thought that you, Bob, were an undercover detective trying to pick up information to build a case.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s me,” I interrupted. “Amateur sleuth extraordinaire. I thought he was going to punch me in the mouth when he found me in his office.”

  “But you didn’t arrest him,” Luce pointed out. “What made you believe him?”

  He lifted the plastic bag containing the glasses. “He had a big head,” Knott explained. “His face was too big for the red glasses to fit.”

  I started to laugh, remembering what Jim had said about Rahr’s opinion of Ellis when he was a grad student.

  He had a big head, he’d said.

  Maybe the truth did hurt, sometimes.

  But sometimes, it saved your little caboose.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Oh, Mr. White, like, you were so right!”

  Music to my ears. I love it when my hard-earned wisdom is validated by the experience of hormone-driven teenagers.

  “Lindsay wasn’t jealous at all!” Kim squealed. “She knew what a jerk Brad was, and she was trying to protect me by keeping him away from me. I was just not, like, seeing him for what he really
was. And even though I got mad at her, like, Lindsay stuck to her guns!”

  I flinched just a little. I didn’t know if I’d ever hear the word gun again without feeling an invisible finger of ice sliding down my spine. It had been five days now since Luce and I got home from the North Shore, but I still dreamed of a gun at my heart every night.

  Lindsay showed up at my office door, and she and Kim threw themselves into each other’s arms. “You are so my very best friend!” they shrieked at each other. The noise level was a bit intense, but at least they weren’t crying. My tissue budget had already become a thing of the past.

  “All’s well that ends well, right, ladies?” I said, knowing full well this was by no means any kind of end, just an intermission. I mean, really, what’s a drama queen without her drama? Just another student.

  Heaven forbid.

  Behind Lindsay and Kim, I could see Mr. Lenzen walking into the counseling office area and making his way over to my doorway. The girls shuffled off, still wrapped around each other, emitting little squeaky sounds. Dressed in his three-piece uniform, Mr. Lenzen (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think of him as Lenzen—it seems too familiar for him, I guess) reached out his hand and, with his linen handkerchief, dusted off the seat of one of my ugly burgundy chairs. He sat down and folded his handkerchief back into his pocket.

  As I watched him, I tried to think especially charitable thoughts, which I’d noticed myself frequently attempting since I’d gotten home from Duluth. As Stan might have said, “Near death can do that.” Anyway, I now found myself thinking that perhaps I had misjudged the man. Maybe I should give him a second chance. Maybe he wasn’t really anal, but had good reasons for his strict adherence to school rules and policies. Maybe he’d been right to threaten me with suspension out of concern for the students’ safety and their ability to concentrate on their studies. Maybe his concern for the public image of the school was justifiable.

  Maybe he was going to apologize.

  Not.

  “Mr. White,” Mr. Lenzen said. “I see you still have these deer hooves in your possession.”

  I looked at Jason’s hooves on my desk.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  “You will make sure they are removed by the end of the day. Their presence in this building violates school policy, and we must set an example for the students. I’d hate to have to make a public reprimand.”

  So much for my charitable feelings.

  The man really was anal.

  “I’ll be sure to take care of it,” I assured him. When pigs fly, I mentally added.

  Apparently satisfied that I was properly contrite, he got up and left, never once mentioning my almost-suspension or my contribution to the solution of a murder.

  “Are you being a bad boy again?”

  It was Alan. He dropped into the chair vacated by Mr. Lenzen and put his booted feet up on my desk. “So what’s on your plate for next week? It’s spring break and all us chickens get sprung from the coop.”

  “Alan,” I said. “I’m impressed. You’re talking birds. Okay, maybe chickens are domestic stuff, but it’s a start.”

  Though I’ve been inviting him to go birding with me for years, Alan always turned me down. He says the nature thing is just not his style. He likes indoor plumbing, room service, and a hospitality suite at Timberwolves games.

  Alan laughed. “It’s being around you, White-man. Despite my best efforts, you’re starting to rub off on me.” He picked up a hoof from my desk and tossed it in the air, then caught it. He studied it for a moment in silence, then looked at me, suddenly serious.

  “You know, Bob, a lot of the old people on the reservation believe that birds are omens, that, because they can fly, they’re closer to the spirit world and can bring us messages. Owls, in particular, are supposed to be connected with death.”

  I was silent for a minute, too. Thanks to Rahr’s murder, I’d had enough of death to last a very long while. Even worse, I couldn’t help but wonder if the memory of that death would somehow haunt all my bird hunts in the future. I sure hoped not. Birding was in my bones. I wasn’t about to give it up because one trip went really, really bad.

  Alan tossed the hoof up again. “And deer hooves, they’re supposed to be connected with assistant principals who are anal.”

  “Now that’s the best reason I’ve heard yet to get them out of here.” I took the one hoof out of Alan’s hand and picked up the other that was sitting on my desk. “And I know just where to put them.”

  I dropped them in Alan’s lap. “Don’t ever say I never give you anything.”

  The phone rang before Alan could respond. It was Lily.

  “I’ve got a pallet of birdseed for you. Payment for helping me with Mrs. Anderson’s landscape plan. She loves the white jack pine and cranberry bushes idea.”

  “Good,” I said. “She’ll get all the birds she can feed. Sorry about losing the big score with the ladyslippers, though. I know it would have made you a ton of money.”

  Alan mouthed “Later” to me and left.

  “No big deal,” Lily replied. “It probably would have been too much of a good thing, anyway. In landscaping, sometimes you want less of a particular plant, rather than more because that way it stands out, and you can really appreciate its individual beauty.”

  “Lily,” I said. “You’re a romantic!”

  “Hardly, Bobby. I’m just practicing how I’m going to tell Mrs. Anderson she should be thrilled with ten ladyslippers instead of hundreds. Got to run. Pick up some of this birdseed on your way home, okay?”

  “Lily—wait.” I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, but I wanted her to know I was sorry about how she’d been used by Stan in his investigation. “About Stan …”

  “What about him?” Her voice was brisk.

  “Despite what you may think of him, he really is a good man. He saved my life, Lily.”

  “I know. And I thanked him before I told him to never walk into my shop again.”

  “Maybe you should give him another chance.”

  “Bobby, he suspected I was taking bribes from VNT. That’s why he was seeing me—to grab a look at my books. I have no interest in developing a relationship with a man who, upon meeting me, assumed I was dishonest.”

  I winced. After all, I’ve always said that Lily knows a good bribe when she sees one. But I’ve never said that she herself would take one. Of course, there had been no way for Stan to know that; he’d just been doing his job, and when her name popped up on VNT’s customer list, he had to do his investigating gig. In the background, I heard Lily saying something to one of her employees in the shop, and then she came back on the line.

  “Besides,” she said, “Stan has too many other irons in the fire to suit me. Did you know that along with his private accounting practice and his government jobs, he also field tests crossbows? I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for a grown man who wants to spend what little free time he has pretending to be Robin Hood. I’m no Maid Marian.”

  That was an understatement.

  “So, stop being a protective little brother. I’m a big girl, you know.”

  I smiled. “You’ll always be a shrimp to me.”

  She hung up.

  I set the phone receiver back in its cradle, but it rang almost immediately. I picked it up again.

  “Bob, I just saw on the list serve that there’s a Ross’s Goose in Winona on the Mississippi.”

  It was Mike and his excitement practically vibrated through the phone. “I’ve never gotten a Ross’s Goose this early in the year before,” he said. “What do you say? Saturday? Do you want to chase it?”

  I’d never gotten a Ross’s Goose this early, either. It would be a real score. On the other hand, was I ready to go back in the field? Elusive birds, professional rivalries, secret poaching operations, murder and mayhem …

  But even as the question lingered in my mind, I knew it would take a lot more than one birding trip gone bad to keep me away
from chasing birds. Like I’ve already said, birding is in my bones. Besides, the route to Winona was already forming in my head. On the way, we could swing by Black Dog Lake and see if any other early migrants were showing up. If a Ross’s Goose had turned up in Winona, chances were good some other birds might be passing through. Given a good wind and climbing temperatures, there was no telling what we might find.

  “Bob? Can you make it?”

  Though Mike couldn’t see it, I could feel the smile spreading across my face.

  “Do birds fly?”

  Bob White’s The Boreal Owl Murder Bird List

  Northern Hawk Owl

  Greater White-fronted Goose

  Canvasback Duck

  Junco

  Bald Eagle

  Red-tailed Hawk

  Pileated Woodpecker

  Great Horned Owl

  Snowy Owl

  Barrows Goldeneye

  Screech Owl

  Black-billed Cuckoo

  Blue-winged Warbler

  Long-tailed Duck

  Harlequin Duck

  Boreal Owl

  Resources for Birders

  Birding websites

  http://moumn.org -

  - Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union website offers audio, video and photo galleries of Minnesota birds, along with occurrence maps, birding hotspots, and other birding information

  http://mn.audubon.org/

  - Audubon Minnesota website answers bird FAQs, reviews conservation efforts in the state and provides ways individuals can become involved in helping Minnesota’s bird populations

  http://www.allaboutbirds.org

  – Cornell Lab of Ornithology website has an extensive data base on birds and links to a variety of information about birds and birding

  http://birdingblogs.com/